by Fiona Kidman
ANNIE BROOME, OR LADY BARKER as she is known, fell into conversation with me at a ball when we were both quite danced off our feet. ‘Well, Miss Scott,’ she said, ‘I feel for those poor young men. I’m far too old for them to dance with, and married at that, but there aren’t enough of you girls to go round.’
‘I’m sure they’re very happy to dance with you,’ I said, for something polite to say.
She burst out laughing at that. ‘No they’re not, for one of them has already expressed his disappointment when I was foolish enough to remark on his having nobody to dance with but me. One should never go fishing for compliments.’
‘They’ll all end up marrying the maids,’ said my mother, who had hurried over to ensure a formal introduction had taken place. ‘You see it more and more out here in the colonies.’
‘I wouldn’t say there were many young women here who qualify for the description of maid,’ Annie said, tossing off the remark in a way that made it hard to tell whether she was being unkind or merely to the point. ‘Of course it’s good for one’s own education, for I’ve learnt more about the art of cooking and baking in New Zealand than I would have learnt in a lifetime in London.’
When my mother moved on, Annie and I fell to talking about station life, and some of the catastrophes that had taken place in her kitchen: like the day she made bread and the yeast brewed up so hard that it exploded like a pistol shot, scattering foam all over the ceiling of the kitchen and none left for bread but she cooked the dough anyway, even though nobody could get their teeth into a corner of the loaf. She laughed so hard when she described this that I found myself wanting to experiment in the kitchen at home, both for the fun of it, and so I could have something to tell her about my own adventures the next time I saw her. And before long she had invited me to visit.
‘But first you must tell me which of the young men you prefer to dance with,’ she said.
When I assured her that so far I had no preferences at all, she raised her eyebrows in mock disbelief.
There is no end of young men I might fall in love with, and I fear I could end up having to choose between two or three. My mother is perpetually anxious about ‘my situation’, as she calls it. Alice, she says, if you don’t fill your card at the balls, how can you ever hope to find the most suitable man?
But, Mother, I say, I can tell without dancing with them that some are not men I will marry. She thinks this unreasonable, on account of the woman shortage so, like Lady Barker, I am bound to a quadrille or two, even with the plainest of them. Besides, my mother says, you don’t really know until you’ve made their acquaintance whether you’ll like them or not. But I do know, that’s the difficulty. There’s the man with big teeth beneath his hairy moustache that I don’t want close to my face at any price, and another whose bad breath follows in a trail behind him even when he has passed to the other end of the room, and yet another who has smooth skin and a girlish face that somehow I don’t trust, even though he is a great flirt with the young ladies, and keeps kissing the hands of the older women, bowing and scraping as if he were in the most elegant of Europe’s ballrooms.
‘Always remember that you’re the daughter of a major,’ my mother says. ‘If you keep that in mind it won’t be so difficult to make a choice.’ To which she might add that my father owns a very large sheep station worth a vast sum of money, but she remarks on that so often that neither I nor any of my suitors is likely to forget. Neither she nor my father would understand the freedom I feel when I am at Broomielaw with Annie and Frederick, how different everything is and, fortunately, they don’t know how we carry on.
I couldn’t work Annie and Frederick out at the start. Annie is older than Frederick by eleven years and has been married before and has children back in England. I wouldn’t call her exactly beautiful, rather handsome, with dark eyes all the more striking for being deep-set, her hair parted with some severity, like a fine slice of sallow peel down the centre of her head. (Frederick parts his hair in exactly the same manner so that they look more brother and big sister than husband and wife.) The set of her mouth can be a little sombre, slightly drawn down at the corners, so that you glimpse sorrow, as if she is only partly in this present time where she appears otherwise so perfectly happy. But you forget that as soon as she speaks, her wide mouth trembling with laughter, her lips as if made for kisses. Oh, forgive me this, but of late I have been worrying about kissing. Mr Forsyth, a young naval lieutenant, has been after me for a kiss and I have thought once or twice that I might give him one. But I have no idea how one goes about it. Do you offer him your cheek and allow him to brush his lips there? Or does he put his mouth upon yours? All of this alarms me. I have almost made up my mind to ask Annie what to do.
Some years ago, when I was still not twenty, Frederick Broome was a man I might have considered, had he shown the slightest interest in me. But he never seemed impressed by any of us girls in the years before he brought Annie here to live, though he was gallant enough. He was a splendid athlete then, but I did hear a rumour that he wrote poetry as well. I wasn’t sure that a poetry-writing farmer would be a very good bargain; there was no knowing where his thoughts might stray. What’s more, it was said there was some connection with the Greeks, though I had no idea what that was at the time. I thought it might explain why he seemed absent in his manner. I’ve learnt since that he spent his childhood in Greece, where his father was a chaplain with the British forces. The vicar, it seems, had too many children to support in any style, and decided to dispatch his son to the colonies to follow farming. That has turned out rather well for Frederick, for his school friend, a man called Philip Hill, has joined him, and his father did have money, so now they are in partnership and own their own sheep station. Philip seems shy, not often seen at social gatherings. He is tall and thin, already with that weathered look of a man who toils in the Canterbury weather — hard bright sun in the summer, and driving snow and cold in the winters.
IT WAS, IN FACT, THE immense light of the sky that had sealed Frederick’s fate with Annie. Frederick had intended to marry a younger woman. In spite of the shortage, several local women would have accepted him, and might have done well enough. He was tempted more than once. But an English-born woman was what he wanted, young, educated and, with luck, good-looking as well. A woman who read and understood literature, and the nature not just of passion but of the mind, in a way that women who had lived most of their lives in the colonies could not. Poor things, they were raised to hear nothing but talk of sheep and horses and the price of wool, as they dined on mutton chops. Preferably, too, someone who had travelled and would not be discontented, once she had settled far from England and the great centres of Europe. This ideal woman would have read the novels of Anthony Trollope and the poetry of Robert Browning, and could talk about the issues of the day yet still be prepared to live in a country where the landscape was vast and empty and the sky as blue as that above the Ionian Sea.
So he urged his body on, running and hurdling, riding his horse at full gallop for mile upon mile across the Canterbury Plains. Scourging himself, like the martyrs of old. He is the finest boxer and wrestler in the colony, boasted the gentlemen of the Christchurch Club to the newspaper. Not only that, but he is an athlete as well, who can run two hundred yards on a grass track in a mere twenty seconds.
When his friend Philip had gained enough experience, Frederick set out to England to find a wife, leaving his partner in charge of the farm. As he travelled, he began to think how impossible it might be to find the woman who fitted his ideal in the few months available to him.
This turned out not to be difficult at all.
On his arrival, Frederick made his way to Prees Hall in Shrewsbury, the rambling red brick house where Philip’s family lived, and where he would stay in England. There, that first evening, he met another of the Hills’ house guests, a woman with a long strong face that seemed solemn when he first looked into it. Although she was dressed in a high-collared mourning dre
ss, he noticed that her throat was slender, and the colour of an arum lily. She turned to him and said, ‘I’ve heard so much about you, Mr Broome, that I could hardly contain my delight when I heard you’d be visiting at the same time as me.’
Later she asked him if he enjoyed viewing paintings, to which he replied that, although it was a long time since he had seen any of quality, given that he had lived in the colonies since he was a mere boy and might not be the best judge, he was eager to improve his education. He felt clumsy and out of his depth, because he had arrived so confident in his knowledge of books and literature, and straight away was shown to be lacking in the simple art of looking at a picture.
‘Do you know the work of Mr Joseph Turner? He is a great modern master.’
When he admitted that he did not, she said dreamily, ‘I love his work more than that of any other artist. He paints light with perfect clarity. Some of it reflects skies like you see here in Shropshire, but some remind me of my girlhood in Jamaica. He mixes pale sea green with deep turquoise blue, purple with crimson and orange, so that I think of light before a storm strikes. Such savage storms we knew in Jamaica.’
‘Why that sounds like the sky over Canterbury before a nor’wester sets in,’ Frederick exclaimed.
‘Really? Then you and I will go to London, and I’ll show you some of Mr Turner’s work.’ With that, Lady Barker placed his hand beneath her elbow, so that they glided together into the dining room.
Later in the evening, they found themselves briefly alone in the drawing room, where a fire glowed in the grate. She stood as if mesmerised, the flames reflected in her eyes, and held out her hands with an odd hungry gesture. ‘I am so very glad we have met, Mr Broome,’ she said.
After that, they walked often in the foothills that rolled towards the Welsh border. One day he took her hand, with the same confidence she had shown, tucking it palm to palm in his pocket with his, oblivious to eyebrows raised at such uninhibited behaviour from those they encountered. When he glanced sideways to see if this was acceptable to her, he saw a look of deep happiness in her expression. Rapture.
THE FIRST TIME I VISITED Annie and Frederick Broome’s station, my mother sent my brother along as a chaperone. I knew there was gossip but that was something mothers did and really none of my business. All the same, I couldn’t help overhearing my mother and her sisters when they thought I was absorbed in some sewing. This was not long before I was due to leave for my visit to Broomielaw.
‘Why on earth would Mr Broome have taken up with a woman of such mature years?’ asked my Aunt Lorna. I thought that was a fine thing coming from her, who had never managed a man at all. My aunt has fine grey eyes and a sharp tongue but her chin is too strong by far, and she forgets to pluck the hairs that stray along her upper lip.
‘It’s not for her money,’ my mother replied. ‘I’ve heard the woman is penniless.’
‘But she has a title,’ retorted Nancy, another of the aunts, summoning a wise and knowing voice. This is her habit, to sound informed about things that are as clear as the nose on your face, as if she were the first person to think of them, even though she is generally the last. She talks so much that she didn’t notice her husband, my uncle by marriage, choking during dinner on a piece of gristle that lodged in his windpipe and felled him to the floor, his face purple, his heart stopped. If only he had told me he was choking, she would say, I might have been able to save him, but that was so like him, not to complain.
‘Well,’ my mother said, in a brisk and reproving tone, ‘Sir George Barker, her first husband, was by all accounts an immensely brave man. He received his title after the fall of Sebastopol, you know. And she lived in Calcutta with him, so she must have some pluck. I’ve heard she faced up to tigers, not to mention the natives in India. Possibly she doesn’t wish his memory to die with him.’
‘But this is New Zealand,’ murmured Nancy. ‘Didn’t we come here to be equal? I mean, really what room is there for titles in this country? Unless, of course, you’ve earnt it yourself. But Sir George is dead and gone, and surely now she should be Mrs Frederick Broome?’
My Aunt Lorna spoke darkly. ‘In that case, perhaps we should ask why she married him. Now that he owns a sheep station. And he’s a very fine figure of a young man, an excellent physique.’
My mother glanced round quickly, hoping that I had not heard this. ‘Hush, Lorna, you know nothing about the … the physique of men.’
‘The baby arrived rather early, I heard.’
‘Lorna, are you not well? The child is with God.’
‘Besides,’ Nancy said, stepping in swiftly, ‘Mr Broome is hardly wealthy yet.’
So, although Mr Broome and Lady Barker were husband and wife, there was indeed this air of slight scandal about them, the titled older woman with the young handsome husband, which made my mother insist that I must not visit them unaccompanied. In the end, quite a party of us set out, and, because my brother George was with me, Mr Forsyth was able to accompany us on our ride. My mother was most encouraging; she was increasingly concerned that I might turn out like Aunt Lorna, whose eyes I have inherited but, mercifully, not her chin. We left at dawn, on one of those sharp spring mornings, the air as crisp as a ripening pear, clear and achingly bright. We fell silent as we rode, only the sound of the horses’ hooves crunching the tussock to remind us that we were truly alive, not just part of a picture. The lieutenant rode up beside me and wanted to talk, but I turned what I hoped was a withering stare on him and soon he dropped behind.
A magnificent lunch awaited us at Broomielaw. We started with champagne, then proceeded to tender young goose, and a sirloin of beef and the new season’s asparagus. The mysterious Philip Hill, who lives a mile or so away in another house on the station, joined us and I must say he was better company than the lieutenant. Philip has read many of the books that overflow the shelves of the house; he is deeply interested in the work of the famous author Mr Charles Darwin, who comes from Shrewsbury where his parents live, so they were all talking about him as if they were on familiar terms, if not with the great man in person, at least with his work. Frederick was somewhat worried by his theories on the origin of the species because they appear to go against the creation story, and Annie and Frederick do believe in God’s will. But Philip argued vigorously in favour of evolution, and the conversation became heated, especially after we’d opened a second bottle of champagne.
The meal was cleared away by an Irish maid named Mary, who kept her eyes averted, as if the conversation might somehow be avoided if she didn’t look. In an effort to steer the topic away from science and religion, my brother enquired after a second sheep station that the Broomes had recently bought near Lake Wanaka. My father had snorted when he heard the price Frederick paid. My brother should have known better than to ask. A silence fell around the table.
‘The lake is very pretty,’ said Annie, after a spell. ‘A beautiful spot.’
Frederick folded his linen napkin several times, making a little concertina from the hem. The gentlemen coughed and my brother complimented our hostess on such a splendid lunch.
‘We must all take a rest,’ Annie said briskly. ‘Alice will certainly need one after her ride.’
I was a little saddle sore and weary yet I felt so exhilarated and, I suppose, rather drunk. I didn’t want to rest, rather to look through all the books. The small house was so comfortable and pretty, with many prints on the walls, and some trophies of Indian swords and hunting spears hung over the fireplace, and bouquets made entirely of ferns in tall white vases on the side tables. I came to a writing table that I understood to be Frederick’s. Some reference had been made to him working there most afternoons. It seems he really is a poet. I noticed a folder containing loose sheets of paper and before I could stop myself I lifted the cover. Scribbled on the front page was a verse that began:
Oh dear little son, born like Perseus
Out of a rain of gold fire, I saw how you fought
In vain. Your memor
y is like stars that pursue us
From hemisphere to hemisphere …
The end of the line was scribbled over, the ink laid on in thick slashes, as if in frustration at not finding a rhyme. But I understood then what had befallen them, the matter my aunt had alluded to. The death of infants is a common enough story here in New Zealand. I was about to turn the page when I heard Annie’s footstep, and I hastily replaced the folder, steadying myself in the hope that she had not noticed.
‘Where have the men gone?’ I asked. The house had become very quiet.
Annie was watching me with a faint smile. ‘The gentlemen have all gone to the swimming hole to cool off,’ she said.
‘Oh, where is that?’ I cried. ‘Can we go and watch?’
Annie burst out laughing. ‘I think not. The gentlemen have laid private claim to it, so they can strip off. They like to swim without their clothes.’
‘Oh,’ I said, blushing. ‘Forgive me.’
She was studying me intently. ‘Do you have a taste for danger?’ she said.
I was taken aback, because my question was innocent and nothing about my demeanour could have suggested that I wanted to view the gentlemen without their clothes. ‘I think we should read for a while,’ she said, appearing not to notice my discomfiture, and handed me a book taken at random from the shelves.
In the evening, we danced on the verandah in the cool night air. I said I wouldn’t dance with the men if they wore their boots, to which Annie heartily agreed, so these were exchanged for slippers. She produced several sets made of purple velvet embroidered with gold, acquired from India. The Broomes called in Mary and a young farmhand to join us. I was surprised that they were part of the entertainment, but they looked as if they were used to it and, after a while, even Mary seemed in a good mood. The music was made by my brother and the farmhand, who whistled together and clapped the top and bottom of some silver dishes as if they were cymbals. But although I danced and danced with Mr Forsyth, I looked in vain for Philip Hill, who had not returned with the gentlemen after their swim. Somebody had to do some work on the farm, I supposed. By the time the evening was over I had decided that this would be the last evening I danced with the lieutenant.